Medicaid and SNAP strengthen Pennsylvania families.
About 40% of all Pennsylvania children rely on Medicaid to access health care, along with Pennsylvanians from every walk of life.
Medicaid covers more than 3 million Pennsylvanians, including:
- 23% of all Pennsylvanians
- 39% of children
- 34% of all births
- 13% of seniors
- 21% of adults
- 59% of nursing home residents
SNAP supports children, seniors, and low wage workers when they cannot afford food.
- Almost 58% of SNAP participants are in families with children.
- More than 44% are in families with members who are seniors or people with disabilities.
- More than 43% of SNAP participants are in working families.
Medicaid and SNAP strengthen Pennsylvania’s economy.
Medicaid bolsters Pennsylvania’s healthcare system.
- As of 2023, the amount of uncompensated care provided by hospitals was 27.7% lower than it
was prior to the Medicaid expansion — even though health care costs increased during that
time. - In 2023, Pennsylvania hospitals received $2 billion in supplemental payments from Medicaid, including disproportionate share and other payments to ensure hospitals can keep their doors open.
- Medicaid is the primary payor for nursing home care, covering almost two thirds of nursing
home residents. Medicaid cuts would put Pennsylvania nursing facilities at risk of closure,
reducing seniors’ access to care and eliminating jobs. - Medicaid expansion has led to the creation of 61,000 jobs in Pennsylvania.
SNAP fuels Pennsylvania’s economy, especially during economic downturns.
- Every month, SNAP brings more than $365 million in federal funds to Pennsylvania through
spending at local grocery stores and farmers’ markets. - SNAP is one of our best anti-recessionary tools. In a slowing economy, for every $1 issued in
federal SNAP benefits, it helps our economy grow by $1.54. That growth also creates jobs, with
larger job growth in rural areas.
Pennsylvania’s state budget cannot absorb proposed cost shifting in its Medicaid and SNAP programs.
The cost of reducing federal funding to Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program is too high.
- Pennsylvania would have to pay more than $27 billion over ten years to cover increased costs if the FMAP for the expansion population was lowered to match non-expansion rates. [9]
- To cover these high costs, Pennsylvania would be forced to cut or significantly reduce access to optional Medicaid programs like Home and Community-Based Services for seniors and disabled people, shift funds from other state expenditures like education funding, or raise taxes.
- If Pennsylvania’s Medicaid expansion was eliminated altogether, more than 800,000 people would lose coverage and hospitals and nursing homes across the state would be forced into crisis.[10]
People will lose access to food assistance under any SNAP cost sharing scheme.
- SNAP benefits are currently 100% federally funded. If the federal government required states to share costs and states could not afford to pay the required amount, federal funding for SNAP would be reduced by the percentage by which states missed the match.
- Under a 10 percent cost-share requirement, Pennsylvania would have paid $427 million last year. If Pennsylvania were only able to fund half that amount, or $214 million, it would have been forced to cut SNAP in half—kicking a million residents off SNAP or cutting benefits in half, or some combination.
